Michael Scheuer

April 25, 2013 |

The Ron Paul Institute: Be Afraid, Very Afraid

In December 2011, when Ron Paul was leading the Republican presidential-primary pack in the Iowa caucuses, the former Texas congressman’s notorious newsletters resurfaced in the national de...

January 4, 2013 | Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Osama bin Laden: Strategic Genius

The late al-Qaida leader knew exactly how to take on the world’s economic and military superpower

November 19, 2012 | Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Jihadology |

Perceptions of the “Arab Spring” Within the Salafi-Jihadi Movement

Co-authored by Tara Vassefi “The popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain have not only shaken the foundation of the authoritarian order in the...

August 9, 2011 |

Declaring War on the ‘Far Enemy’

On Aug. 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden, within a few months of arriving in Afghanistan, issued a manifesto proclaiming himself at war with the world's only remaining superpower. Bin Laden's...

June 14, 2011 |

Bin Laden Unplugged

Analyzing the latest video

June 14, 2011 | National Review Online |

A Year@War

Successes and setbacks.

June 14, 2011 | National Interest Online

Religion and Realism After 9/11

In 1996, halfway through America’s "holiday from history", terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp published an article warning of a surge in religious fanaticism that would manifest itself in "sp...

January 24, 2011 | National Review Online

Mukasey Must Reading

  Two things you really ought to read. First, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, former attorney general Michael Mukasey reviewed two books that analyze U.S. national security...

November 4, 2010 | The Long War Journal

Reflections on Osama bin Laden, and his Continuing Relevance

Earlier today, I did a rather lengthy written interview with a journalist from an online Romanian newspaper. In light of the new tapes Osama bin Laden released last month, he put a number of ques...

October 22, 2009 | Middle East Quarterly

The Strategic Challenge of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab

Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation. In the modern period, America...

September 8, 2007 |

Bin Laden Unplugged


Osama bin Laden's strength as an orator has always been his ethos. He is an eloquent and seemingly honest speaker, proud of his role in the attacks of 9/11, a principled spokesman for radical Islam's war against the West. Though bin Laden may not have penned all his words personally, the force of his ideas always shines through. As Bruce Lawrence notes in Messages to the World, "these messages are not ghostwritten tracts of the kind supplied by professional speechwriters to many politicians in the West, whether American Presidents, European Prime Ministers, or their Middle-Eastern counterparts."

April 26, 2006 | |

To Bomb, or Not to Bomb

WHEN I WAS RECENTLY in Paris, a French diplomat explained to me why he--and many others in the French foreign ministry--thought the United States would, in the end, bomb Iran's nuclear-weapo...

July 14, 2005 | Clifford D. May

Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?

How about the least likely suspect?

June 29, 2005 | Clifford D. May

Get Smart

There is no such thing as an experienced suicide bomber. This insight seems to have eluded the Central Intelligence Agency.  A few days ago a classified CIA report was leaked to the...

April 13, 2005 | Clifford D. May

Not-So-Secret Agents

Perhaps there was a good reason why secret agents used to stay secret. So long as espionage was a profession that average citizens encountered only in fiction, we could imagine spies wer...

March 16, 2005 | Tech Central Station

Michael Scheuer’s Bloody Logic

By: Andrew Apostolou.   M...

November 17, 2004 | Clifford D. May |

Memo to Spies and Diplomats

Stop Whining and Do the Jobs You're Paid To Do